Sally Field “fought like holy hell” for Lincoln

Even Sally Field worried she was too old for the role of Mary Todd Lincoln. But she was willing to go to the mat for it.

Sally Field has gained career-high reviews in hot biopic Lincoln, she tells The Hollywood Reporter that director Steven Spielberg didn’t want her for the movie.

Though Spielberg had offered Sally Field Mary Todd Lincoln’s role in 2005, by the time the film was being cast, he’d changed his mind.

“By the time it was going to be made, the original person [Liam Neeson] had dropped out and Daniel Day-Lewis came on board, and from the time that he first asked me, a little voice inside me said, ‘You’ll never do it, Field. You’ll never do it,'” Field said.